Finishing First Year
In 41 days, I officially will be finished with my first year of vet school. Come May 5, I will have taken more than 40 exams, listened to roughly 200 hours of lectures, spent more than 200 hours in the gross anatomy lab, and easily put in more than 1,000 hours of studying, all since we stepped into our brand-new vet school complex on Aug. 22.
Whenever anyone asks me how vet school has been going, my go-to answer always tends to be something along the lines of, “It’s certainly challenging, but so doable.” It comes as no surprise that vet school is challenging. After all, we’re here to become doctors—that should be no easy feat! Gone are the undergraduate days of committing information to memory for the sole purpose of doing well on an exam, only to forget all of it in a matter of minutes. As a vet student, I am striving to make sure that I truly am understanding what we are being taught and learning the material so that it really makes sense, so that it can stick with me forever. What makes it so doable, though, is how interesting the subject matters are.
This is the foundation that I will be building upon for my next three years of vet school, and I want to make sure it’s a strong one! I am excited to make the most of these next 948 hours of life as a 1VM and end the year on high note, but I am definitely looking forward to the summer break and coming back as a 2VM! I have no doubt that the next school year will be just as great and memorable as this one has been.